Equations
by Fireflamesinferno
Summary: Haley's dead, and someone has to get Hotch through the night. And Emily realizes that the math isn't in her favor. Or maybe it is.


**Equations**

**AN: Hi! So I've had this idea for a while. Basically, I noticed that Emily and Hotch's relationship changes post "100." As in, they're just really not that close anymore at all. It's all work. Before you could kind of see they were building some sort of quasi closeness outside of their professional relationship, and then, kaput. SO. Here's a little story taking place the night of "100," to explain this. Because to heck if Haley's death didn't do something to drive them apart.**

**Disclaimer: I disclaim this.**

**Warning: Hard T for language only. Because Emily's mind drops f bombs.**

They get to the door of his apartment and Emily's suddenly thinking about standing here weeks ago, calling his name, hearing his cell phone, kicking down his door, seeing his blood matting the carpet. Browning the wall. It's a bad moment for that particular déjà vu, but how can she not think of it when the entire day has been steeped in Foyet, Foyet_. Foyet._

Emily wonders why she's here at all, especially after Hotch vehemently told them all to let him go home alone, that he'd be fine, that he didn't need anything, that he'd get to his hearing with Strauss tomorrow morning on his own. But they all know him too well, and they all know he doesn't need to be alone.

He heard her die. He _fucking_ heard her die, and he doesn't need to be alone.

Glancing back, Emily meets eyes with JJ, lets her gaze wander over the sleeping boy nestled in the blonde's arms. Jack hasn't cried yet, because maybe he really doesn't understand what's going on, or maybe it's because Hotch has cried enough for the both of them. His lids are tightly shut in a deep sleep, but Emily can see the impress of his eyes darting back and forth beneath, and she knows that if JJ stays and watches over him, she's going have a long night of nightmares to sooth.

And so is she, really. And Morgan. And Rossi and Reid and Garcia. Because the tall stature of the man in front of her, their boss, their leader, is buckling. Emily sees his arm tensing, his muscles in seizure, his hands clumsily laying waste to his bolt lock. He just can't get the _fucking _key into the hole.

"Hotch." Morgan says from somewhere behind her, and Emily scowls. _Shut up, Derek. Let him do it._ The man in front of her is caving in, and he wants, no, _needs _to get the key into the lock because then maybe it's not that bad, maybe he can move on with life, because he can get in a door with Haley and he can get in a door without Haley.

Emily almost sighs in relief when he gets the door open, because he can't break yet, not when he's trying to get his son into his bedroom and nestled into his racecar sheets, the set that Hotch always leaves on the bed in the second bedroom for when he comes to visit.

They all go inside, all seven, eight, of them. It's dark, and right before Hotch flips the light on, Emily sees some sort of ghost flash in her mind. She imagines Foyet standing there, imagines him training a gun at her forehead, imagines his moist, pulsing breath on the nape of her neck as he forces her to call someone and say goodbye. And then it is gone.

Emily falters for a moment, because she knows. She knows from this moment on, Hotch will see this wraith every time he goes through this door. And in the hours that he sleeps. And in the hour that he's awake. All the time. Hell stuck on repeat all the _fucking_ time.

Hotch pauses at the kitchen table, putting down his keys. He doesn't look at them, his team, but he's no longer buckling. He's crumpling. She can see it in his shoulder blades, in his taut flanks, in the way his pants indent at the back of his knees.

"JJ.." The gruff noise isn't his voice. It can't be his voice. Not their boss. Their strong, sometimes fierce, stony boss. His voice is level, impactful, with enough quiet to sound like the eye of a hurricane. This voice can't be his, because it's not Hotch, their Hotch. It's a_ fucking_ wasteland.

"I'll go put him down." JJ answers quickly, all business, because he needs it right now. They all know that sounding concerned, terrified, sorrowful will make him break. So they are Hotch's strength, because it's not in him right now.

JJ walks by Hotch, and he, _the father_, brushes his hand over Jack's forehead. Emily thinks this might be it; this might be the crumble of the façade of put-togetherness. But it passes without anything, and JJ's gone into the spare bedroom, Jack's room. Emily almost wishes she could go with her, but she's not a mother, she doesn't know what being a mother is (because she never really had a good one and she gave up her own chance.) JJ is the best equipped to make sure Jack can sleep, to stay until he's okay.

So what did that make the rest of them? Equipped to take care of Hotch?

Emily focuses on the place where his shoulders cave in, the knot forming in the small of his back, the copper staining the bandages on his hands. Were any of them equipped for that?

"You can leave now." It's brusque, and it almost makes Emily bristle, but she's not petty enough for that. He wants to be alone, to wilt alone, to travel to the brink alone, but they can't allow that. They visit Hades as a career choice, so to hell with leaving a man behind. This was what they did.

They leave him standing in the kitchen and move further into the living area. Certainly he can still hear them, but it doesn't matter, he knows he won't win.

"JJ can't stay the night. She lives too far out, and she has to get back to Henry and Will." Emily begins, stating the obvious they all know. It would be easier to have her stay, but after that day, they know she needs to be with her own family.

Garcia takes the first step. "I'll stay with Jack after she's done. He knows me a little and I don't live far away. Whoever else stays can drop me off in the morning." No Garcia sass, no humor, no color. There's nothing to say but that, and Emily feels empty because of it.

Morgan can't stay, because he drove JJ and needs to take her home. They all know this. Rossi and Emily and Reid share a look, because it's up to the three of them to take Hotch. To _take _Hotch.

_Who's closest to him?_ Emily wonders, but it seems rhetorical. Which of them can be stalwart enough to get him through tonight, to get him past a twilight of sweaty sheets and waking nightmares, into the dawn, and into another day of that damn job (the job that _fucking _kills)? The question passes between them in a millisecond and Emily knows it's not her.

She's not close to Hotch.

They have a work relationship, and they're on friendly terms. But friends? They've gotten closer in the past year, certainly, and she respects him enormously. But actual, genuine friends? They're not really friends. Friends don't have a fortress worth of walls to get past, and a damn ocean's worth of secrets to wade through. Emily's about to tactfully voice this, take the out, when Rossi clears his throat.

"I'll stay." And it makes sense. It makes sense that Rossi stays, because though he can be hotheaded, single-minded, and overtly obsessive, he's also wise and to the point, and Hotch appreciates that. He appreciates the lack of bullshit, and he's going to need someone to be sane and straightforward for him tonight. Emily feels relief run through her because she couldn't volunteer, she can't do this. This. Hotch.

But then Rossi continues. "I'd like you to stay with me, Emily, if you don't mind."

She doesn't understand. It doesn't comprehend. Why in the _hell _would he want her, _her_, to stay? Rossi, the czar of pragmatism, seems to be making some sort of assertion. He's holding some notion in his mind that she can't get at. It seems absurd. Reid doesn't get it either, because he makes that face that is simultaneously puzzled and wounded in a puppy-esque sort of way. That face. But then something changes in his gaze, and it's not wounded anymore. The gears, those prodigy boy wonder gears, have clicked, and Reid gets something that Emily doesn't.

_Say no_. She thinks it's obvious. They're not friends. They never have been. But she trusts him with her life. She trusts him with her _very _life.

That means something.

She doesn't know why Rossi wants her to stay, why Reid agrees, or why she's about to agree, but she does. She agrees.

"Ok." The gulp she takes feels like a jagged stone passing through her throat and bottoming out in the pit of her stomach. "Ok," Emily looks to Reid, "And you?"

"I'll head out. I don't want to overstay my usefulness." His lips quirk at the corners, that smile that says _I'm no good here. _Spencer Reid is a bona fide genius, but knowledge can't always be applicable if the person isn't equipped to use it. _He's a gem_, Emily thinks, because he's humble enough to admit his nearly infinite storehouse brain isn't always the solution.

_If there is a solution._

And that's that. Rossi follows Hotch back into the back bedroom, and Morgan gives Garcia a kiss on her forehead before she changes guard with JJ. And the three head out. Right before she leaves, JJ shares a look with Emily. Her stratosphere blue eyes are glassy and turning red.

"Jack started crying in his sleep." They take a moment to let this sink. Emily squeezes her friend's shoulder, and they're gone. And it's Garcia with Jack and Rossi with Hotch and Emily alone.

_Why the hell did I stay? _Emily feels so, so strange standing here. The room is nondescript, cold. There is no sound but the steady hum of the AC and the one-two beat of her breath. She doesn't know what to do. She's lost.

Emily didn't feel invasive when she came to find Hotch _stabbed_ in his apartment weeks and weeks ago. He needed her then. It was all business, all emergency, all immediate. Now it's personal, a different kind of life threatening, and it's a terrain she isn't sure she can trek.

And then Rossi comes out of the back room, his sleeves rolled up and his heavy brow burrowing shadows into every dip of his face. Emily stirs, tucking a strand of raven hair behind her ear. It's an impulse she had rid herself of in her teenage years, but she finds it coming back under high stress. Being under threat of death or danger didn't do it, but standing right here, right now, twists her diaphragm into distortion.

"Emily," Rossi starts, and her impulse is to tell him not to "Emily" her, but she remains quiet. "I'm sorry I asked you to stay."

An apology from him is weird, but she's dying to know what reasoning and rationale is dancing about behind those dark brandy eyes. "It's fine," she lies.

"It's not fine, is it?" Rossi knows he owes her explanation. He goes to the cupboards, picks out one of the few glasses and fills it with water from the sink. Emily can hear him gulp in the quiet. "I know this is odd, Emily. Hotch doesn't really have close relationships with any of us beyond the realm of our job. But we are his friends for all intents and purposes. We are his family, because he made it that way with his dedication to the job."

And he had lost his outside. His choice to remain dedicated to his job ate away at his marriage, slowly decimating his life outside work. Only Jack remained, in the end. All that was left with Haley was a ghost love, one that was wreaking havoc in him in her absence. Emily leans against the jutting of the wall, crossing her arms over he chest. Rossi is right. In a way, they are the closest thing Hotch has got to family.

"But today, he lost one of the last two people that make up any semblance of an outside." Rossi takes a sip. "And right now he needs whatever he can get as far as family goes. Anything to keep Haley alive in a sense, to keep that outside stable so that he doesn't drown in this. He needs that to stay strong for Jack."

Suddenly, it clicks. "I'm the most like her."

Rossi doesn't even nod to confirm but simply tells her with a weighted look. And Emily gets it now.

Haley was smart, Haley was quick. She was loyal in regard to her closest family (Jack), compassionate when need be, and a hard ass the other occasions. Most of all, she was braver than hell, especially in the end.

Emily is not Haley. She doesn't think she'd be a great mother (the abortion looms over her head despite what JJ tells her), and she isn't remotely trusting or open in regards to the grit of her secrets. But there's something, something similar in their basic elements, some nuance refrain that she can't quite name that makes her the candidate for this particular task. And it's stupid that she doesn't want to be brave enough to try, but she can't back out now.

As Emily ponders this quasi-existential strain of thought, glass breaks.

Her eyes dart up, and it's not Rossi's cup, but it's from the back room. Rossi puts down his water and they swiftly move back past the kitchen. Emily can see a halo of orange light creeping into the grey, dingy hallway from the open bathroom door, and it's glinting weirdly, splicing into patterns on the wall. On glass shards. She's glad she's wearing shoes.

The sight she sees over Rossi's shoulder is a pariah. Hotch is strong and orderly, the picture of a man of brawn _and _brain. This is not Hotch.

The mirror is cracked, resembling some sort of splintered electric pulse with the way the glass sidles out from the center. Where it was punched. Glass litters the countertop, adorns the floor, makes the linoleum a hazard zone. There's water in places, sitting in singular droplets, holding in puddles, or trickling in rivulets between the shards. And, crunched up with his back to the edge of the bathtub, Hotch is curled, hunched over.

He's sweaty, he's crying, he's bleeding. "Damn it," Rossi whispers, and he goes to the hallway closet for bandages. Emily stands still, because she doesn't know what to do.

Hotch's hands are wringing through his hair, running rust colored streaks, matting clumps. He's saying something, muttering something, and it sounds like _I'm sorry_, but Emily can't be sure. Then Rossi's back, and he's unwrapping bandages, crunching glass on the floor. He winces as his own hand catches on a shard on the counter. "Aaron, can you come here?"

No response.

Rossi meets Emily's eyes. "Can you see if you can get him up? I'm going to go get a broom." She thinks she must look like a damn deer in the headlights, but this isn't time for cowardice. Then she's alone with Hotch again.

_Fuck_, she thinks, because that's all she can process. "Hotch," she tries, but it's to no avail. She wants to be mean, yell at him a bit for doing something stupid, but she really doesn't have the lack of heart. Instead, Emily does something radical: she breaks through their first unspoken boundary, their personal space.

Kneeling down in front of him, she's careful not to slit herself on the microcosm of slivers dotting the floor. She's shocked at the damage to his right hand when she sees it up close. It's not broken, but the skin has split asunder, scarlet trails leaking out, worse than it was earlier that day when he _beat a man to death_.

No, not a man. _Foyet_.

Emily tries again, "Hotch." He's really doing a number to his hair. There's valleys and spikes and peaks, all coated with the coagulating irony smell of blood. So she breaks through their second boundary, and she touches him.

They have never really touched before. With JJ and Garcia, there's hugs. With Rossi and Morgan and sometimes Reid, there's elbow nudges or shoulder squeezes. With Hotch, there is six solid inches of nothing at all times.

Touching him is odd, peculiar, and strangely something she's thought about before (she doesn't know in _what the hell-fucking_ context), but these are not the circumstances she thought it would happen under.

Emily's hand takes hold of his undamaged one, and she's surprised how hot he feels. Beneath his skin cells, there's a fire brewing, and she doesn't know how to put it out. She can feel the same molten something pulsing through the veins in his wrist, angry and incinerating.

Emily stays herself for a second before slowly peeling his hand from his hair, holding it in earnest. And it's weird to be holding her boss's, _Hotch's_, hand on his bathroom floor, avoiding bits of glass, waiting for him to come to. But he needs her to push, because he's pulling away to somewhere he doesn't need to be.

She takes his other arm by the wrist, tenderly (maybe the first thing she's ever done tenderly in her whole life,) and she cradles it carefully, cautiously so as not to cause more blood flow. "Hotch," she says again, "Hotch." And though it's foreign as hell, and tastes like something exotic, she finishes with, _"Aaron."_

He looks up.

Emily thinks this is where they will fail. This is the third boundary. Because she looks into red, red, swollen eyes, sweltering with tornados and hurricanes and storm systems without name. Because she doesn't know what to say or what to do now, because she's never remotely been this far with anyone in her life, this deep into someone else's sorrow.

But as she looks, she catches a small strain that is Hotch, and she wills it to follow her to the sink. He's sweaty and there are trails of tears running serpentine down his face, and she's not sure if he's really seeing her, but his good hand clenches firmly around hers and they begin to get up.

It's messy, avoiding the glass, but they make it to a standing position and she sort of feels like he needs to lean a bit on her. He does, and Emily first of all notices how he severely needs a change of shirt because it's the dress shirt still coated in sweat, blood, and _Foyet_. Secondly, she notices how _six inches became no inches really easily, and it's not so fucking scary or bad and it's almost sort of kind of nice._

But this was so not the time or place to entertain that. Instead, she entertains the latter. "Let's use the kitchen sink to clean you up. Rossi can sweep in here." Emily's not aware of this all business voice that's coming out of her, because she definitely feels like nothing of the sort.

And they make it to the hall and she sees Rossi coming out of the closet and she takes the bandages from him and she's dimly aware she asks him to get Hotch a new shirt when he's done cleaning up in the bathroom and he acquiesces.

They're at the sink, and she sees his fingers numbly working at the buttons of his shirt and she really wants to shoot herself because she's going to have to help him and _hell _if there isn't a part of her mind that puts _this_ in a different context. A girl has to keep herself sane somehow in the midst of all this fucked-uped-ness.

Emily reaches forward, knocks his wounded hand aside and begins to unbutton it. His undershirt reeks, and the sting of the scent cause her to come to. She works quickly, helping him shuck it off his shoulders and flinging it on the counter. Hotch starts on the undershirt but winces when he's got it inside out on his arms. Emily takes hold of the material and slowly draws it down across his forearms, dancing around the warpath he's made of his lower arms. It catches accidentally on his wrist, the bad one, and she feels rather than hears him give a guttural grunt.

She almost feels relief that that's over, because she's pretty sure undressing her boss will give her nightmares (or some other sort of _not welcome _dreams.) Bunching up the no longer white material, she draws him to the water.

It runs harshly cool for a few moments, and she doesn't want to hurt him outright so they wait till its warm before he finally lets the blood wash away from his knuckles. Emily gets a good look at the wounds beneath the cascading rush and the steam and the clenching and unclenching of his fist and _shit, that needs some rubbing alcohol_.

As per usual, Rossi's a step ahead, and it's already sitting out on the counter. She grabs it and intends to pour some on a paper towel, but Hotch motions to take it.

"I can do it."

_Impetuous,_ she thinks, but she lets him take it anyway. Hotch pours it straight on the wound and then lets out a wet hiss at the stinging pain. Emily turns away because she knows that he knows that she knows he _wants _every bit of that sting, because something physical and sharp is drawing him back to reality and making his hurt tangible. She wants to stop him, but _dammit, she's not Haley, despite what Rossi thinks._

She's Emily Prentiss, and Aaron Hotchner does not _want _her here.

So she thinks. And maybe it's true and maybe it's not, but she winces every damn time the rubbing alcohol hits his hands, and enough's enough. She grabs a clean hand towel and the bandages and turns off the water. Hotch has the good sense to cut it out with the masochism, because she fixes him with a hard look, one that says, _I don't care if you want me here or not_ (though she actually does,) _I'm here to stay._

He again takes the lead and begins bandaging his own hands, and it gives her the opportunity to see the scars for real this time. She saw them briefly in the hospital, in between slips of bandage changes and shifts of medical gowns. But now that his chest is bare, she sees every white line.

Hotch is well built, something that doesn't surprise Emily. From all the bad guy chasing and shoot em' up they do, he had to have been. He's lean and taut and well chiseled. Which is why the scars stand out all the more, because the deep lines cut canals through his otherwise smooth contouring muscles, and it's a grid work of ivory on a tan plane. She has a bizarre urge to trace them out, one which she sure as hell does not give in to.

Soon, he's ready to go change and whatnot and she goes with him back to his bedroom. On the way, she shares a look with Rossi, still cleaning up the glass. He's almost done, but he hasn't had time to grab Hotch clothes to change into, so Emily gets the privilege of following her boss into his room and making sure he doesn't break anything else.

When they're alone, he fumbles in his drawers and pulls out a clean T-shirt. And she helps him get it on past his wounds again and _awkward_. When it's on him and they're in close proximity and she's enormously glad he's dressed, he finally meets her eyes again. And she's pissed because she can tell where this is going.

"You three can leave now."

She crosses her arms and gives him a Prentiss trademark glare. "We're not leaving. Who's going to watch Jack?" Matter of fact.

"I will."

"Then you won't sleep, and Strauss will be ten times more hell than usual."

He's still trying to be patient. "I'll be fine."

"Forget it, Hotch. We're staying."

She turns to leave to go rejoin forces with Rossi, but Hotch makes some sort of rumbling noise in his throat and catches her arm. And it's weird because even though she's already been handsy with him, there's no reason he should be with her. Emily turns back to him and scowls at his scowl because hell if he isn't scowling beneath his "emotionless" demeanor.

"I probably won't sleep anyway. There's no sense in anyone wasting time here. I'll be fine."

Lie. Big fucking lie. She wants to hit him upside his head, but that would be pretty dumb, she decides. Not particularly diplomatic or anything. "You punched a mirror, Hotch. It doesn't take a profiler to get that."

And really, he knows it's obvious. He's not stupid enough to think that _she's_ stupid enough to believe him. But he had to try anyway. He mutters something about taking a shower in the morning and then sits on the side of his bed. Emily's not sure he's aware of her anymore, but she lingers a second anyway, just to make sure he doesn't go ape shit on the dresser or something. Some segment of her lung constricts, and she wonders if that's her heart breaking, because hell if he isn't seeping tragedy from every pore.

Emily finds Rossi in the hall, putting away the broom. She leans against the hallway wall, crossing her arms in a grip lock around her chest. "I'm going to stay in the room with him until he's asleep."

Rossi regards her for a second with that thick, weighty brow furrowing in contemplation. Yes, it's a bizarre statement considering how horrifically uncomfortable all of this was making her. How she doesn't know how to handle this at all, how she can't even begin to compare her sorrow for Matthew to this. Rossi seems to be analyzing this, analyzing _her, _and she's analyzing herself, because hell if she doesn't know what's she's doing.

"Okay. I'm going to go talk to him and then I have some casework to finish up. You can take the couch whenever you're ready, and I'll probably just grab the armchair." The look he gives her is too knowing and she hates it. Because she really has no idea what in the world it is that he knows.

Rossi disappears into Hotch's bedroom and Emily glances at the spliced bathroom mirror. She sees herself, except she's spiked with lesions and severances. Her chest contracts around her heart, and she's not sure if the palpitations are induced by lack of sleep or by something else entirely.

"I'll be in the kitchen if you need me." She jumps because Rossi's sidling past her, and his eyes are jet and ash. Emily turns around and Hotch's bedroom door looms before her.

Why was this so hard? What exactly was it that made this wall in their little mishmash family? Because they've said it over and over that this is a family. That they're brothers and sisters and really that's that. And Emily knows she wins the prize for most distant, beating out Hotch and Rossi by millimeters. But she also knows her relationship with Hotch wins for "most professional." It's a mess, really. Because she doesn't know what to do with the intensity of it, whatever _it _is that keeps them from being close like the others.

As she makes her way through the doorframe, she sees him sprawled on the bed, his back a cave in, buckling under sorrow. Emily's not sure if he's asleep or not, but she turns his light off and settles herself in the armchair in the corner of the room.

She watches him for a long time. And at some point, she flirts with sleep, and it dances around her like a devil, caressing her mind.

It's right around the cusp of going under that it hits her.

She's the most like Haley, in that essential _whatever _that makes (made) them strong, sensible, brave women that sometimes paints them too fierce for their own good. And it's that _whatever _that's preventing her and Hotch from being close like the rest of the team, because it's _that _that makes her his type. The _whatever _is potential, and they're both too scared and independent and broken and dark and secretive to even touch at it, to ever even consider tasting it.

And that's that.

Right before she drifts off, she looks at his prone form, and it's in a new way. Because it's the kind of body Emily could wrap herself around and spend forever with. And that scares the hell out of her.

When she wakes up, she has no idea what time it is. One of those ungodly hours right before dawn where no one should ever be awake. By the grey light creeping ever so subtly through the blinds, she knows it's almost time to go.

_Motherfucking hell_, if she doesn't feel like hell. Emily wants to go back in time and kills herself for deciding to sleep in an armchair. She's contorted and cramped and _ugh_. As she attempts to unfurl herself from the awful position, she notices Hotch isn't facing away from her anymore. And he's awake.

Emily catches his eye, and she doesn't know how long he's been watching her. In his eyes, she sees something that says he wishes he didn't wake up this morning. She wills him to be stronger than that, because she knows there's a boy who needs a father in the other room.

She isn't sure how long they watch each other with a sleepy haze, but her mind can't help putting it somewhere else, putting it where she wakes up to this every morning for the rest of forever.

At some point, Rossi comes in. "Emily, we need to leave soon so I can drop you and Garcia off in time to get to work. Will you be okay to get there, Hotch?"

"I'll drop off Jack at Jessica's and be there at eight." His voice is from somewhere else, somewhere business and cold.

Rossi nods and leaves the room, presumably to get Garcia. Emily stands with a muttered "See you later," because it's getting to the point where the _whatever _is back in her head, and she wants it _out_. But he's standing too.

A million sentences flit across his lips and they're not even standing that close. But when he settles on one, it stabs her in places she doesn't think about, doesn't ever go to. "Thank you, Emily."

She doesn't know for what, really, and there's that moment where she knows both of them want to bridge this gap with something terrifying and explosive and something that will rent the fabric of their worlds.

_But they fucking can't._

So instead she gives him something small, something that'll mark the night and this morning as the last time they can do this, crossing this gap. "You're welcome, _Aaron_."

Later, as they're driving away, and Emily's watching grey light become white light behind rain clouds, she knows she's going to draw away from this. She's going to build another wall.

Because he's tragedy too now.

Two tragedies don't make a happy ending.

**AN: So. This is a reason why I think their relationship could have changed. Because I feel like Emily's just craycray enough to immediately pull away if she ever realized their potential. Alas. True Love.**

**p.**


End file.
